CU-Boulder blames enrollment dip on stepped-up recruiting of Colorado students

Total students down 1.7 percent this year

Adlar Thomas, a University of Colorado freshman from Oregon, rides on the crowded shuttle bus to the Williams Village dorms from the Boulder campus on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. With Thomas is Amanda Tadla, a freshman from Centennial. CU officials reported Wednesday that overall enrollment is down slightly.
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PAUL AIKEN
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Overall enrollment at the University of Colorado's Boulder campus dipped by 1.7 percent this year, according to early estimates, and officials say out-of-state recruiters who are able to offer scholarship packages to high-caliber Colorado students are creating a more competitive admissions landscape.

Total enrollment registers at about 30,417, according to an update presented to the CU Board of Regents during a meeting on the Boulder campus Wednesday.

Kelly Fox, the financial chief for CU's Boulder campus, said historically there have been three full-time, out-of-state recruiters stationed in Colorado. Now there's 20 -- from institutions in Michigan, Missouri, California and Wyoming, for example -- who are focused on courting Colorado students.

"As we look at our best and brightest students, we are seeing them choose other schools," Fox told the board. "It's becoming a highly competitive environment."

Campus census figures haven't officially been released, but the freshman class numbers about 5,500 -- which is on par with the historical average.

Last year, CU's Boulder campus enrolled 5,663 new freshmen.

In this past admissions cycle, 57 percent of the Colorado students who were admitted to CU, Fox said, chose to go out-of-state or to more expensive private schools, likely because of attractive financial aid offers.

CU -- and other colleges and universities -- long have recruited non-residents, who pay much higher tuition rates, to help subsidize rates for in-state students.

At CU, for example, students in the College of Arts and Sciences, which enrolls the majority of students on the Boulder campus, pay $8,056 for in-state tuition. Tuition for new, out-of-state students is $29,946.

Barmak Nassirian, an independent higher education consultant formerly with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said such a small change in enrollment data shouldn't sound the alarm. He dismissed the notion that out-of-state recruiters could have much of an effect.

"There are all kinds of completely random fluctuations in enrollment and it's very tempting to identify the causality," he said. "The University of Colorado shouldn't have any trouble finding qualified in-state students."

Nassirian said that continual tuition increases, though, are not inconsequential.

CU student Noreen Mian, who is studying psychology and communication, said that she had her college choices whittled down to the University of Pennsylvania and CU-Boulder. She said she began getting deluged with mail and phone calls from out-of-state colleges beginning her junior year in high school. Mian, from Aurora, ultimately chose CU because of its proximity to home.

The positive highlight from the enrollment update, CU-Boulder officials said, is a 14 percent increase in international students, who now number 1,900.

CU recently sent admissions counselors overseas to recruit foreign students with the goal of internationalizing the student body.

Also, 22 percent of new freshmen are students of color with enrollment of African-Americans, American Indians and Asian-Americans representing the largest percentage increases among minority students.

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